05.13.09

The Houston Chronicle’s Richard Justice (above, left) recently opined that L’affair Manny was neither the fault of Bud Selig or Donald Fehr, but rather, “all on the players. Former Rocky Mountain News columnist / Michael Lewis sparring partner Tracy Ringolsby points a finger at the MLBPA rather than ownership. In the view of Biz Of Baseball’s Maury Brown, there’s no shortage of blame to go around.

While the players ultimately make the decision to use PEDs, isn™t it the lure of incredibly high salaries that drive one to use them? Richard, isn™t there a case to be made that a player such as Barry Bonds saw what Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa were doing, and decided that he too would get on the steroid gravy train?

By extension, aren™t the fans to blame for the PED culture, as well? After all, if there were such an outrage over the matter, the players would be playing to empty ballparks and fans would be turning off the games on TV and radio in protest. Isn™t the money spent by the fans paying for the salaries for the players?

Finally, the writers are to blame. It™s a complex issue. Those that covered the sport during the peak of the steroid era should have gotten on-board with reporting on the abnormal muscle mass increases and prodigious levels of power hitting in the mid-to-late ˜90s.

Richard, those writing that Selig and Fehr are partially to blame aren™t idiots. They just happen to live in a world more complex than you are giving it credit for; a world fill with gray, as opposed to the simplicity of black and white.